Storage system latency evaluation based on I/O patterns

ABSTRACT

A system or method for identifying latency contributors in a data storage network, that may include creating a historical workload fingerprint model for a data storage network from training data, along with monitoring and classifying a current sample data from the data storage network into a cluster, current workload fingerprint, and current workload type. The method may further include assigning a score to the current sample data based on the historical workload fingerprint model and correlating measured latency values from the current sample data to historically measured latency related factors to create a latency score chart that identifies factors causing latency in the data storage network for the current sample data.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of Indian Appl. No. 201841016313,filed Apr. 30, 2018. This application is incorporated herein byreference in its entirety to the extent consistent with the presentapplication.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

In data storage networks, latency is the amount of time required or usedby a storage device to respond to or service a data request, such as anInput/Output (I/O) request. A higher or longer than usual latency timeindicates a performance degradation on the data storage networkexperienced by the application using the data storage network.Conventional data storage network performance evaluation processesmeasure latency times to determine if the data storage network isexperiencing performance degradation. However, conventionallatency-based performance evaluation methods have shown to be highlyinaccurate, as data storage network performance is impacted by aplurality of factors other than just latency times. More particularly,data storage network performance is known to depend on variouscharacteristics of the application workload of the data storage network,such as the size of I/O requests, CPU saturation, port saturation, disksaturation, queue depth, and cache misses, for example. Therefore,conventional latency-based performance evaluation methods for datastorage networks are prone to yield inaccurate results and falselyindicate performance degradation. Thus, a challenge for data storagenetworks and administrators thereof is how to accurately identify ifthere is a performance issue in the storage environment, and if aperformance issue is identified, the likely cause of the performanceissue. Another challenge with conventional data storage networks isidentifying the root cause of latency-based performance degradation, asconventional latency-based performance evaluation techniques are notcapable of analyzing or otherwise determining factors that may becausing latency issues. Further, conventional latency-based networkperformance evaluation methods are not able to offer insight intoupcoming network latency issues, which would be desirable for networkadministrators in managing network activity.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

So that the manner in which the recited features, advantages and objectsof the present disclosure may be understood in detail, a more particulardescription may be had by reference to the example embodiments thereofillustrated in the appended drawings. It is to be noted, however, thatthe appended drawings illustrate only typical or example embodiments ofthis disclosure and are not to be considered limiting of its scope.

FIG. 1 illustrates an example plot of clustering algorithm results usedto identify latency thresholds in a data storage network.

FIG. 2 illustrates an example latency table for eight data clusters orworkload types.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example list of factors ordered by correlationcoefficients to show likely contributors to observed latencies.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example method for identifying latency factors ina data storage network.

FIG. 5 illustrates an example health score chart generated by a methodor software of the present disclosure.

FIG. 6 illustrates a chart of the results of a MAD operation, outliers,and the median values of constructs, namely the CPU groups.

FIG. 7 illustrates an example graph to visualize outlier influence.

FIG. 8 illustrates an example periodicity table.

FIG. 9 illustrates a table of the workload value distributed into equalsized bins and the actual corresponding workload fingerprint.

FIG. 10 illustrates an example plot of a data set processed to showactual latency compared with predicted latency.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example method for identifying latency anomaliesin a data storage network.

FIG. 12 illustrates an example method for predicting future data storagenetwork workload patterns and periods of high latencies.

FIG. 13 illustrates an example hardware configuration for implementingexample embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 14 illustrates an example method for identifying outliers in datastorage network latency metrics that may be contributing to latencyperformance in a data storage network.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following, reference is made to examples or embodiments of thedescribed concepts in this disclosure. However, it should be understoodthat the described concepts are not in any way limited to examples orembodiments described herein. Instead, any combination of the followingfeatures, elements, or functionalities, whether related to differentembodiments or not, is contemplated by the inventors as a possiblecombination that may be used to implement and practice aspects of thepresent disclosure. Furthermore, in various embodiments described inthis disclosure provide numerous advantages over the prior art. However,although embodiments of the disclosure may achieve advantages over otherpossible solutions and/or over the prior art, whether or not aparticular advantage is achieved by a given embodiment is also notintended to be limiting on the scope of the disclosure. Therefore, thefollowing aspects, features, functionalities, embodiments, andadvantages are intended to be illustrative and are not consideredelements or limitations of the appended claims, except where explicitlyrecited in a claim. Similarly, any reference to the “invention,”“innovation,” “inventive concept,” etc. is not be construed as ageneralization of any inventive subject matter disclosed herein andshall not be considered to be an element or limitation of the appendedclaims except where explicitly recited in a claim.

Embodiments of the disclosure provide a system, method, and softwareprogram to reliably capture, identify, and score a workload for a datastorage network, where the workload is generally defined as a set of I/Ocharacteristics running through a group of machines that interface withnetwork and storage infrastructures. The method or software of thepresent disclosure may continuously and in an unsupervised mannercapture data storage network workload metrics in a machine learningprocess, whereby the captured data storage workload metrics may beclassified into known patterns that may be used to score, as describedfurther herein, current and future I/O operations of data storagenetworks. The data storage workload metrics used to evaluate datastorage network performance may include, for example, latency, I/Ocounts recorded, read/write ratio, cache hit percentage, CPU usage, CPUsaturation, cache saturation, back end disk saturation, disk portsaturation, front end port saturation, queue depth, I/O size, cachemiss, CPU busy, cache hit/miss, and other parameters known in the art tohave an impact on data storage network latency. The scored data storageworkload metrics provide a measure of the I/O latency for the datastorage network that can be compared to previously captured and scoredmetrics, also referred to as historical metrics, from across an installbase of similar data storage networks to evaluate performancedegradation in the data storage network.

These scored data storage workload metrics can also be used as inputs toperformance and health dashboards of the data storage networkmanageability software graphical user interface so that the scoredlearning information may provide a near real-time view of theperformance and/or health of various aspects of a data storage network.This scored learning information, when compared to historical datastorage network metrics, is advantageous to the data storage networkadministrator in resolving performance issues, as the scored learninginformation when compared to historical data storage network metrics canhelp the administrator determine the actual cause of latency in the datastorage network. Health and performance dashboards generated bycomparison between the historical scored workload metrics compared tocurrent data storage network metrics is also advantageous to storagenetwork administrators in making network critical decisions onscheduling resource intensive storage or other data storage networkintense operations, such as migration, large data transfers,maintenance, etc.

In an example of the disclosure, a system, method, or software packagemay operate to extract latency related data parameters or metrics from adata storage network to create a unique historical representation forthe data storage network's workload. The extraction process may occur,for example, locally through storage device management software residingon individual data storage devices, on a management computer or serverfor a data storage network, on controlling or monitoring softwareassociated with a data storage network, in the cloud via monitoring ofcommunications to/from a data storage network, remotely through hardwareor software configured to monitor data transmissions to/from a datastorage network, or through software applications accessing a datastorage network that are configured with sensors or data monitoringcapabilities that allow for gathering of data storage network workloadmetrics needed to evaluate performance of the data storage network. Theunique historical representation of the data storage network's workloadcan be used to compare with recent data storage network workloads orparameters from data storage networks across a larger platform, such asan installed base, to identify performance issues with a data storagenetwork.

Example embodiments of the disclosure provide the capability to generatea unique historical representation of workload patterns for a datastorage network by looking at histogram data of the different types ofI/Os occurring during a sample interval. Example embodiments of thedisclosure may analyze a storage network or system that is conducting anI/O process by comparing a pattern for the current I/O process to uniquehistorical representation(s) of data storage networks to find acorresponding or related historical representation. For the uniquehistorical representation related to a current I/O process beinganalyzed, if the data service time or latency is “X” in the historicalrepresentation, then embodiments of the disclosure may analyze samplescollected across the installed base to determine that a service time orlatency of “X” lies in a specific latency percentile range, and further,if that percentile range is overloading the current data storage networksystem. In sum, embodiments of the disclosure may capture a currentrepresentation of a data storage network and compare the currentrepresentation to a corresponding historical representation representingnormal or typical operating parameters to determine if the latency inthe current representation is in a normal range that corresponds withacceptable data storage network performance under the specific workloadconditions present.

In an example of the present disclosure, a workload fingerprint model iscreated from the total and average values for storage network datalatency metrics over a sampling interval reported in a data structure.The workload fingerprint model may be a multidimensional vectorrepresenting a plurality of latency related metrics for a data storagenetwork, where the latency related metrics may include I/O countsrecorded, read/write ratio, cache hit percentage, CPU usage, CPUsaturation, cache saturation, back end disk saturation, disk portsaturation, front end port saturation, queue depth, I/O size, cachemiss, CPU busy, cache hit/miss, and/or various other metrics known to orcapable of impacting latency in a data storage network. As such, theworkload fingerprint model used in this example of the presentdisclosure may be based on a plurality of parameters related to latencyof the data storage network as opposed to conventional data latencyperformance measuring techniques based only on latency timemeasurements.

The multi-dimensional vector representing the workload fingerprint modelmay be represented as a bin histogram or diagram of generally parallelrectangles where the area of the rectangles is proportional to thefrequency of a variable and whose width is equal the data classinterval. The example disclosure may use the bin histogram to create alabelled point data structure, wherein each point in the labelled pointdata structure represents a distribution of the number of I/Os ofvarious sizes into several fixed sized buckets, which may be referred toas histogram data for I/O sizes. The bucket sizes may, for example, beselected by relevance to a specific type of data storage latency issue.For example, the sizes may be 1 k, 1-2 k, 2-4 k, 4-8 k, 1-2 m, 2-4 m,and if in a 5-minute interval there were ten I/Os of size 4 k and 5 I/Osof size 128 k, then the labelled point would look like [0, 0, 0, 10, 0,0, 0, 0, 5, 0, 0, 0 . . . ]. Additional metrics, such as the number of“Read” and “Write” I/Os and/or the number or ratio of reads and writesthat hit or miss cache may also be factored into the labelled point datastructure. For example, if in a 5 minute interval there were twenty readrequests and thirty write requests, the ratio of the reads to writesi.e. 20/30=0.66 is added an an additional parameter to the labelledpoint. Also, during the same 5 minute interval, if five of the readrequests and ten of the write requests were were served from the cache,5/20=0.25 and 10/30=0.33 which are the cache hit ratios for reads andwrites are also added an additional parameters to the labelled point.Using the hit/miss ratio, for example, gives an indication of therandomness of the I/O from the measure of how many reads missed thecache memory.

A collection of each of these points across all samples that belong to astorage system and across all samples that belong to the storage systemsof the identical class is what forms the known historical data ortraining data used by the system, method, or software of the presentdisclosure to compare to and analyze current data storage latency trendsor issues in a data storage network. Training to obtain training data orhistorical data may generally be defined as collecting data to supportcreating an equation or a transfer function capable of recognizingsimilar or recurring patterns in the data.

A clustering algorithm, such as a k-means clustering algorithm, may berun on the labelled point data structure or training data with thecluster size set to eight to yield eight clusters of workload types thatare the workload fingerprints. K-means clustering is known as amathematical method of vector quantization that is used for clusteranalysis in data mining, where k-means clustering aims to partition “n”observations into “k” clusters in which each observation belongs to thecluster with the nearest mean serving as a prototype of the cluster.This essentially results in a partitioning of the data space intoVoronoi cells with clusters of comparable spatial extent. As an example,Voronoi diagrams are a partitioning of a plane into regions based ondistance to points in a specific subset of the plane. That set ofpoints, typically called seeds, sites, or generators, is specifiedbeforehand, and for each seed there is a corresponding region (Voronoicell) consisting of all points closer to that seed than to any other.Other cluster sizes greater than or less than eight are contemplated tobe used with the k-means clustering algorithm, however, experimentaldata suggests that setting the cluster size to eight unexpectedly yieldsoptimal results with minimal overhead for data storage networks. Runningthe k-means clustering algorithm yields eight data clusters each ofwhich is a workload type that may be referred to as a workloadfingerprint. Optionally, the example embodiment may use an alternativeclustering algorithm, such as a Gaussian mixture model, to run on thelabelled point data structure, assuming the Gaussian model is set to thelabelled point data structure distribution.

After running a clustering algorithm, each resulting cluster willcontain a plurality of samples, some clusters having more samples thatthe others. In an example data analysis 100 shown in FIG. 1, clustersderived from 600,000 samples across 120 storage systems are shown in aplot of the latency percentile values across all the samples against thelatency values for each Read or Write operation for each of theclusters. The four plots of FIG. 1 show each of the latency percentileshaving a gradual slope increasing from left to right until encounteringan elbow 102 where the latency percentiles increase to a near verticalslope, as shown at 104. The location of the elbow 102 in the plotindicates a latency threshold for each of the four types of workloadtypes. Thus, the majority of the I/O operations for each specificworkload type were serviced in time that is less than or below theidentified elbow 102. The elbow locations can therefore be used todetermine a threshold that delineates a boundary between normal and highlatency for a specific workload, i.e., high latency is above or right ofthe elbow/threshold and normal latency is below or left of theelbow/threshold.

Once the latency thresholds have been identified, a latency table may begenerated for each workload type or cluster. FIG. 2 illustrates alatency table for the eight data clusters or workload types from theclustering algorithm. The table illustrates the different latencythresholds for each workload fingerprint identified by the eightclusters, the number of systems, and the number of samples that belongto each cluster in the training data. The latency percentile plot andthe latency table provide the foundational benchmark for real timecomparison and analysis of incoming data storage fingerprints.

Once the latency table and the latency percentile plot have been createdfor the data storage network, the example embodiment may monitorincoming samples/labelled points over a sample time period and classifythe incoming data into clusters, workload fingerprints, and workloadtypes. Therefore, the example embodiment may be deployed onsite in adata storage network within the data storage unit management software onthe local storage units. The management software may record and classifyeach new incoming sample or labelled point from the storage system inreal-time. The samples are collected by or otherwise transmitted to themethod, system, or software of the present disclosure and the trainedk-means algorithm is applied to classify each sample into a specificcluster, workload fingerprint, and workload type, and the latency valuerecorded for the sample is used to assign a score to the sampledepending on which column of the latency table it satisfies or fits in.For example, if the sample belongs to cluster 1 and the latency isbetween 1.31 and 1.4, the sample is assigned a score of 1, similarly, ifit falls in the 91% column, it gets a score of 2. The scoring is basedon the position in the table the value lies in, e.g. the scoring beginsfrom the 90% mark. Values that lie in the 90% mark get a score of 1, theones that lie in the 91% mark gets a score of 2 so on an so forth.Therefore, a value that lines in mark 98% gets a score of 9 and thevalues that lie in 99% mark gets the highest score of 10.

Example embodiments may use time series correlation on the data toidentify which factor(s) primarily contribute towards the observedlatency during a specific interval of interest. The measured latency ofthe samples that have a score greater than zero may be correlated withthe observed values of the other relevant factors in the storage system.Example factors include CPU saturation, cache saturation, back end disksaturation, disk port saturation, front end port saturation, queuedepth, I/O size, cache miss, CPU busy, queue depth, cache hit/miss, andother parameters known to have an impact on data storage networklatency. The factor with the highest correlation coefficient isdetermined to be the highest probability of being the primary factorcausing the high latency. An example list of factors ordered by thecorrelation coefficient shows which of the factors are the likelycontributors towards the observed latency is shown in FIG. 3.

The time series correlation may be used to determine what factors arecontributing to latency by looking at what correlating factors increaseor decrease with the observed latencies. Essentially the correlationmethod measures the potential contributing factors over the definedperiod of time and correlates with the matrix reported by those factorsand latency values at specific points during the period. Using thecorrelation, a duly weighted approach may be applied to determine howmuch of the latency or the service time at a particular point of timecorrelates with the identified contributing factors that were determinedto be occurring at the same time as the observed latency.

Different data storage networks use different hardware and software, andfurther, within a data storage network, it is common to see differentsoftware and hardware. In an example system there may be five storagesystems, each running different software applications, such as Oracle,VMWare, SQL, Tapana, etc. When a conventional latency monitoring methodlooks at the I/O patterns that the storage system sees for thesedifferent applications, it would not be able to accurately identifylatency factors, as each software application has a different workloadfingerprint. The present method and software overcomes this disadvantageby using an unsupervised learning technique discussed above to createbuckets of distinct workload fingerprints, which are not applicationspecific, but rather represent different types of I/O patternsreflective of latency contributing factors present in variousapplications. Therefore, although all data storage network managementsoftware packages or data storage units do not include software togenerate the data metrics needed to accurately identify factors directlycontributing to latency, embodiments of the disclosure are capable oflooking for distinct patterns in data storage networks that can identifylatency factors irrespective of the underlying software application ofthe data storage network.

Returning to the Latency Table illustrated in FIG. 3, the example methodor software of the disclosure determines that if a storage system isdoing an I/O pattern which belongs to workload fingerprint A, forexample, and if the service time is X, then the method or software isable to determine by analyzing the samples collected across theinstalled base that X service time lies in a specific percentile valuefrom the latency table in FIG. 3. The example method or software wouldgenerally determine that for the sample that is overloading the systemor causing latency above the identified threshold value, the latencythat was experienced by or during servicing of this workload fingerprintA was at the 95th percentile or higher, which also indicates that it isan outlier when compared to the latencies of the same bin. As such,example embodiments of the disclosure are capable of identifyingoutliers by using the latency threshold and percentile values.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example method for identifying latency factors ina data storage network. The method begins at 401 where a workloadfingerprint model is created using total and average values for datalatency metrics. The method continues to 402 where a labelled point datastructure is created, wherein each point of the data structurerepresents a distribution of the number of I/Os of various sizes intofixed sized buckets, which are then represented by histogram data. Thehistogram data may include additional factors (noted above) such as theI/O read/write ratio, cache hit percentage, etc. The method continues to403 where a clustering algorithm, such as a k-means or Gaussianclustering algorithm, is run over the labelled point data structure withthe cluster size set to, for example, eight to yield eight clusters ofworkload types that represent the workload fingerprints. At 404 themethod may identify thresholds for high latency for each identifiedcluster or workload type and generate a corresponding latency table.Method blocks 401-404 may be used to generate historical or traineddata, i.e., workload fingerprints, for use in analyzing incoming data toidentify latency issues in a data storage network.

At 405 the method monitors incoming samples/labelled points for a datastream to be analyzed over a sample time period and classifies thelabelled points into clusters, workload fingerprints, and/or workloadtypes. At 406 the incoming data to be analyzed is assigned a score usingthe recorded latency value based on the latency table. At 407 the methodcorrelates measured latency with observed values (and other factors)that are identified as contributors to latency to create a latency scorechart that identifies the factors contributing to data storage networklatency. Thus, at 406 and 407 the method compares the measured metricsof the data stream to be analyzed to the recorded historical or traineddata (historical workload fingerprints) to identify factors contributingor causing latency in the data storage network. The data captured from aparticular storage device or network may be periodically run through theabove noted method and have each iteration or observation classified andscored in accordance with 400-407. These scores are then used toidentify representative periods of “red”, “yellow” and “green” thatindicate the health of the system using performance as an indicator,wherein an average score of 1-4 may be categorized as “yellow”, 4-7 as“red,” and 7-10 as “wine”, as shown in FIG. 5. The observations at thegranularity of 5-minute intervals may be rolled up and averaged at thehourly level, which may then be rolled up at the day and week level asdesired by the user. Thus, example embodiments of the disclosure arecapable of providing performance scores for a data storage network usingvarious test or sample intervals, including by minute, hourly, daily,weekly, monthly, etc.

In data storage networks, performance issues are nearly always causedwhen the storage system is subjected to a larger workload than what itwas designed or sized for. However, there are also a significantpercentage of scenarios where the performance issues in a data storagenetwork are a result of a misconfigured system or bugs in the datastorage network operating software. Example embodiments of thedisclosure identify anomalies in a data storage network that indicatethe presence of a misconfiguration or bug in the data storage networkmanagement software.

Example embodiments of the disclosure may use statistical methods toidentify outliers or anomalies in the data storage network latencymetrics. A statistical method used to identify outliers may be anabsolute deviation mathematical operation. Similarly, the statisticaloperation of median absolute deviation (MAD) may be used to identifyoutliers or anomalies in the data storage network latency metricsreported by the groups of objects that form logical constructs in astorage system. Example logical constructs include volumes, disks, diskports, CPU cores, etc. Example embodiments of the disclosure can detectif there are outliers in the metrics reported by any one of the groups.In statistics, the median absolute deviation is a measure of thevariability of a univariate sample of quantitative data. For aunivariate data set X₁, X₂, . . . , X_(n), the MAD is defined as themedian of the absolute deviations from the data's median:MAD=median(|X_(i)−median(X)|, therefore, starting with the residuals(deviations) from the data's median, the MAD will yield the median ofthe data set's absolute values. Example embodiments of the disclosurereport the MAD value, the number of samples beyond three times the MADvalue, which are the sought-after outliers, and the median value of theoutliers. If the group of objects in a logical construct share the loadequally, there would typically be no outliers, but if one of the objectsin an object group is more saturated than others, the higher outliercount and the median of the outlier would provide a data indicationusing the MAD that the logical construct has an imbalance due to amisconfiguration or a software bug identified by the outlier. A chartillustrating the results of a MAD operation, outliers, and the medianvalues of constructs, namely the CPU groups in the present example, isshown in FIG. 6.

Example embodiments of the disclosure may generate a summary of theanomalies detected by using the MAD and this summary can be reportedagainst the performance chart for the data storage network for theperiod of interest. The anomaly will typically be present over all thesample time observations across the period of interest, so an averagepercentage of outliers per sample and the average median value isreported in the summary to provide an overview of the influence ofoutliers on performance. For a specific period of interest, the medianvalues are normalized in the range 0-1 so that it is straight forward toscore or tag them based on intuitive thresholds. As an example,normalized median between 1-4 may be assigned a score/tag of “moderate,”a normalized median of 4-7 may be assigned a score/tag of “high,” whilea normalized median of 7-10 may be assigned a score/tag of “very high”for anomalies, as shown in FIG. 6. Each sample observation may have adifferent influence of outliers and the method or software of thepresent disclosure uses the median values as scores to differentiate theinfluence factors and to visualize the difference by using, for example,various shades or colors on the latency chart, as shown in FIG. 7. Thepercentage of outliers are displayed over each visible sampleobservation range on the chart for use in managing and maintaining thedata storage network.

Example embodiments of the disclosure may analyze the data based onwhether it is high, moderate, or normal from the table in FIG. 6 togenerate the anomaly representation chart in FIG. 7. The anomaly chartprovides the user with a call out tool that may allow mouse overs todisplay the corresponding anomaly cause and associated metrics. Thescores illustrated in FIG. 7 may be considered the percentage of theoutliers. When the user views this information, they see the peaks at,for example, time equals five and six in the chart. At times five andsix, there is a spike in latency and the shading indicates to the userthat the influence of the anomalies on outliers was significantly highduring this region when compared to the other regions. This provides theuser with an indication to the next aspect of performancetroubleshooting at the specific component or software level, as thelatency at times five and six was high and the primary influence ofanomalies during this period of time was CPU scores. Without thegraphical representation of FIG. 7, the user would have to go look atthe work matrix recorded by the system at each different point in timethrough the correlation, manually find the outliers, and manually try tocorrelate the outliers with the cause factor, which may take anexcessive amount of time to accomplish.

FIG. 14 illustrates an example method for identifying outliers in datastorage network latency metrics that may be contributing to latencyperformance in a data storage network. The method begins at 1401 wherethe data storage network metrics are captured. The metrics are generallyrecorded by the individual drives in the data storage network, forexample, by the management software present at the drive. Metrics mayalso be captured by other devices, sensors, or processors external tothe individual drives and through various networks or the cloud (e.g.,remote computing system(s)). Example metrics used to determine anomaliesmay include latency times, number of or types volumes, number of ortypes disks, number of or types disk ports and their usage percentage,CPU scores, application workloads, etc. Once the data storage networkmetrics have been captured, the method may continue to 1402, whereperiods of high latency are identified. The process of identifyingperiods of high latency may be accomplished via any of the methods notedherein, such as the example method described with reference to FIG. 4.

At 1403 a statistical deviation algorithm, such as a MAD, may be appliedto the data storage network latency metrics around the identifiedperiods of high latency. Applying the MAD operates to statisticallyidentify outliers in the metrics reported by the data storage networkand/or the individual drives in the data storage network. In anotherexample, applying the MAD operates statistically identify the outliersin the groups of objects that form the constructs in the data storagenetwork system. Once the statistical deviation algorithm has beenapplied, the method continues to 1404 where all samples beyond 3 timesthe calculated statistical deviation are identified. For example, at1404 all samples having a value that is equal to or greater than 3 timesthe statistically calculated MAD value are identified as outliers in thedata set. At 1405 the median value of the samples identified as beingequal to or greater than 3 times the MAD, which are the outliers in thedata, is calculated.

As noted above, when the load is shared equally in the data storagenetwork, there will not be any outliers identified, as all of the datasamples would yield a MAD that is less than 3 times the statisticaldeviation. However, when one of the objects in an object group is moresaturated than others, then the outlier count from the statisticaldeviation and the calculated median of the outlier count provides anindication that the logical construct likely has an imbalance due to amisconfiguration or a software bug. Therefore, as discussed with respectto the Outlier Table illustrated in FIG. 6, at step 1406 the method mayoptionally generate a summary table of the anomalies detected in themetrics and report this data against performance for the sample intervalor period of interest to illustrate the comparison to a data storagenetwork administrator. The summary table may include a calculated scoreor grade of the severity of the outliers, as shown in the right columnof the table FIG. 6 as normal, moderate, high, very high, etc. Thistable is useful for data storage network administrators to visualizeanomaly relevance and importance. The method continues to step 1407where the calculated median values during the sample duration arenormalized in the range of 0-1. This normalization allows the examplemethod to score or tag the values based on predetermined thresholds,which may be normal, moderate, high, and very high as noted above in thediscussion following FIG. 6 on normalization.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example method for identifying latency anomaliesin a data storage network. In 1101, the method includes training orgenerating from data capture over a data storage network installed basea machine learning model of latency metrics. In 1102 the method createsa trained workload fingerprint model, as discussed above, for thetrained metrics. The trained workload fingerprint model representslatency characteristics of the data storage network installed base.Further, as described above, a latency table corresponding to theworkload fingerprint model may also be generated. In 1103 the trainedworkload fingerprint model is incorporated into storage devices,packaged, and shipped with the storage management or control software ofindividual storage devices. Alternatively, the trained workloadfingerprint model may be incorporated into data storage devicemanagement computers, servers, networks, or other devices or systemsthat manage communications to and from a data storage device. In 1104,the management software analyzes real time or recent local sample datafrom the storage device or system associated with the managementsoftware and categorizes the sample data into one of the trainedworkload fingerprint models. In 1105, the management software maycontinually poll data from the storage device at predeterminedintervals, such as every minute or every five minutes, where the pollingincludes pulling the data as recorded by the system of the differentkinds of I/Os that the system has serviced during the sampling intervaland classifying the polled data into the trained workload fingerprintmodels.

In 1106, the classified data or fingerprint models for the current I/Oare correlated with percentile scores for latencies, which may also beincluded as part of the software control methodology shipped with themanagement software for the storage device being analyzed, and as such,this correlation may take place locally in the management software. In1107 the method determines the latency that was reported by the storagedevice at a particular point in time and scores it with the latencytable generated along with the workload fingerprint model. In 1108 onceit is identified that the system is experiencing a latency problem, themethod continues to break the latency problem down by identifying thecontributing factors through a latency score chart. In 1109 once thefactors contributing to latency are identified, the method identifiesthe anomalies, such as an imbalance in the way the CPU cores aredistributing the workload or how the back-end ports are distributing theworkload. In 1110 the method may compile this information into a healthchart for presentation to the user.

Example embodiments of the present disclosure may use portions of themethods already described herein to predict future data storage networkworkload patterns and periods of high latencies. An example embodimentof the disclosure is configured to classify data center workloads intoworkload patterns or workload fingerprints that can be compared tohistorical patterns or fingerprints to identify anomalies. Exampleembodiments of the disclosure, using historical workload fingerprintdata, may also predict and forecast which specific future time periodsare likely to be dominated by a specific workload fingerprint. Toaccomplish this prediction, example embodiments of the disclosure firstapproximate a workload fingerprint by a workload value, which is acontinuous random variable in preparation for a time series analysis tobe run thereon. Example embodiments of the disclosure may use principalcomponent analysis (PCA) to determine the projection of a labelled pointalong the first principal component as the approximation of the labelledpoint, and hence an approximation of the workload fingerprint, which isthe “workload value.” The PCA model is generally trained in the cloudusing samples from several systems across the entire install base andthen deployed in local storage management software to execute predictivefunctions.

Example embodiments of the disclosure use PCA to generate anapproximation of the workload fingerprint. For example, the workloadfingerprint may be a sixteen-dimension vector wherein the first fourteencomponents of the vector may represent the bins/buckets that describethe number of I/Os of a particular size recorded during the samplingperiod, i.e., 512 b, 1 k, 2 k, 4 k, 8 k, 16 k, 32 k, 64 k, 128 k, 256 k,512 k, 1 m, 2 m, and 4 m. The fifteenth and sixteenth components of thesixteen-dimension vector may represent the read/write and cache hitpercentage. The following are example data vector representations:

-   -   2017-11-15 01:30:00 125343 175025 38860 418705 1097010 379141        69739 164494 592364 217616 531677 203831 0 0 6.5 35    -   2017-11-15 01:35:00 212623 193538 48574 668882 1448122 445723        152965 191030 793793 301458 209243 85818 0 0 5.7 32

The example vector data shows, for example, that on Nov. 15, 2017 at01:30:00, there were 175,025 I/Os of size 1 k (1,024 bytes) (i.e.,represented by the data “175025” in the second component of the vector)and 379,141 I/Os of 16 k that were recorded (i.e., represented by thedata “379141” in the fifth component of the vector). The ratio of numberof reads to writes was 6.5 (i.e., represented by the data “6.5” in thefifteenth component of the vector) and the 35% of I/Os were servicedfrom cache memory (i.e., represented by the data “35” in the sixteenthcomponent of the vector). The example vector data representationillustrates a number of example parameters that may be used in arepresentative data storage network vector, however, the vector mayinclude any parameter related to data storage network latency, and theexample embodiments described herein are not limited to the parametersillustrated in the example vectors. The disclosure may approximate thissixteen-component vector to a numerical value represented by thevariable called the “workload value”. This is done using PCA, whichgenerally operates to reduce the dimension of the workload fingerprintvector from sixteen to one by linear mapping of the data to alower-dimensional space in such a way that the variance of the data inthe low-dimensional representation is optimized.

In mathematics, dimension reduction is the process of reducing thenumber of random variables under consideration by obtaining a set ofprincipal variables. Dimension reduction generally falls into eitherfeature selection or feature extraction methodologies. Feature selectionapproaches are based on finding a subset of the original variables,which are called features or attributes. Feature extraction approachesare based on transforming the data in the multi-dimensional space into aspace of fewer dimensions. PCA is a linear feature extraction approachthat may be used to reduce the workload fingerprint to a singledimension workload value. Other linear and nonlinear dimensionalityreduction techniques are contemplated for use in reducing the workloadfingerprint vector to a workload value.

In an example embodiment, the PCA dimensionality reduction may be alinear transformation function that the example embodiment of thedisclosure trains in the cloud. The example embodiment may then usesamples from the community to learn or determine what the lineartransformation function should look like, which is, for example, whatPCA for dimensionality reduction accomplishes. The linear transformationfunction may be packaged into the code of the management software for anindividual or group of data storage elements, which is then used topredict (transform a sample and predict the workload value) in real timefor data storage arrays being managed.

In example embodiments of the disclosure, the time series data whereeach time sample has a corresponding “workload value” is used to studythe periodicity. The inventors have found that over 40% of the storagearrays studied in the field have a one-day periodicity and over 75% ofthe storage systems in the field exhibit some form of periodicity(hourly, daily, weekly, etc.), as shown in the example periodicity tableof FIG. 8. The existence of periodicity in workloads of data storagearrays indicates that it is possible to reliably predict and forecast aworkload that would be subjected to the storage array in advance of theworkload happening, i.e., forward looking predictive data storage systemmetrics for latency, workloads, etc.

To provide this predictability, example embodiments of the disclosureuse the PCA model and the k-means model (the workload fingerprintingmodel discussed herein) on the storage array's current metrics, which isused in real-time to generate and assign a current workload fingerprint.This current workload fingerprint again represents the clusters the datasamples belong in and there may be any number of clusters, however, theinventors have found that using eight clusters yields an optimal resultfor data storage network data analysis. The method and software of thedisclosure also uses PCA and k-means to generate the correspondingworkload value, which represents the approximation of the workloadfingerprint, from the projection of the data sample onto the firstprincipal component.

FIG. 9 illustrates an example table of the workload value distributedinto equal sized bins and the actual corresponding workload fingerprint.The data for the table in FIG. 9 was generated from a study across a setof 120 similar storage systems. The table of FIG. 9 illustrates that ifthe workload value is between zero and one, then it is most likely tobelong to label zero, i.e., workload fingerprint zero has a probabilityof 62%. Using this information, the method or software of the disclosurecan predict the expected latency known from our latency table for thespecific workload fingerprint, e.g. the expected latency for workloadfingerprint zero is <2.1 ms, as illustrated in the latency probabilitytable of FIG. 9 and the latency table of FIG. 2.

Therefore, example embodiments of the disclosure are able to forecastthe future workload of a data storage network using a time series modelbased on the workload value of the trained samples. Thus, in the examplenoted above, the method or software is capable of hypothesizing thatthere is a 62% probability that the latency between time t1 and t2 isexpected to be <2.1 ms. A reliable latency probability table is mostreadily built when the management software for the data storage networkhas a chance to observe the data storage network behavior over areasonable period of time compared to the desired prediction range. Forexample, if it is desires to predict latency for 2 days from now, thenthe periodicity through which the data should be collected to support anaccurate prediction is at least three to five times the expectedperiodicity of the data storage network. Therefore, the number ofsamples per classification is an important parameter in determining ifthe probability value is accurate and is acceptable for use inpredicting latency values. Similarly, the actual latency value asobserved over a reasonable period of time, which is typically two ormore weeks of normal operation, is also used to forecast the likelylatency during specific intervals in the future. In FIG. 10, this valueis displayed side by side along the expected latency during the sameinterval noting that a large deviation between the likely and expectedlatency is a clear indication of a system behavior that needs furtherinvestigation and might also require support intervention.

FIG. 12 illustrates an example method for predicting future data storagenetwork workload patterns and periods of high latencies. The examplemethod may begin at 1201 with training a latency data model representinga I/Os for the network. The training data durations is expected to be5-10 times the periodicity of the system in order to generate accuratelatency prediction results. The training generally includes categorizingsamples into workload fingerprints, as noted at 1202, and determiningthe corresponding workload value for each workload fingerprint, as notedat 1203. Further, the training may include determining the probabilityof a workload fingerprint for a given workload value, as noted at 1204.This training data represents the historical or baseline latencyinformation used to support predicting future data storage networkworkload patterns and latencies. Further, this training data may bepackaged and shipped with individual data storage network drives viaimplementation of the data into the management software of individualdrives or in the management or controller software configured to controla plurality of network storage drives. Once the software containing thetraining model is packaged with the drive, the method continues tomonitor data flow of I/Os and capture current sample metrics and datafor analysis, as noted at 1205. At 1206 the method predicts the workloadfingerprint corresponding to a current sample. The workload valuecorresponding to the workload fingerprint is calculated at 1207. At 1208the method continues to forecast future latencies based on the workloadvalue and time series data. The forecasting may use the ARIMA model,which is a statistical method for time series forecasting also known asAuto Regressive Integrated Moving Average. ARIMA is a class of modelthat captures a suite of different standard temporal structures in timeseries data.

FIG. 13 illustrates an example hardware configuration 1300 forimplementing example embodiments of the disclosure. The hardwareconfiguration 1300 includes a plurality of data storage devices 1301,wherein each data storage device 1301 may include a management software1302 incorporated therein. The management software may include a localprocessor configured to control the operation of the data storage device1301 in accordance with a predetermined computer program runningthereon. The computer program may be stored on a computer readablemedium and contain instructions to be executed by the processor in thestorage device 1301 to control the operation of the storage device 1301.The plurality of data storage devices 1301 may be connected together toform an array, storage system, or data storage network, which may be incommunication with a data storage network computer or server controller1303. The management software may be present at the drive, array, ordata storage system level. The controller 1303 may be in communicationwith the cloud 1304, which may be in communication with the plurality ofother devices, computers, servers, or other computer processing or datastorage elements. One example device that may be in communication withthe cloud 1304 may be a data center management computer or server 1305,which may be used by the manufacturer of the data storage elements 1301to communicate with the data storage elements 1301 to obtain data ormetrics from the storage device 1301 related to latency or otherparameters or metrics of the storage device 1301. The cloud 1304 mayalso be in communication with other servers 1306 or data storageelements 1307, which may collectively define additional data storagenetworks.

The computer processor located in the data storage element 1301, theserver controller 1303, or the management computer 1305 may be used toexecute computer program instructions configured to analyze theperformance of the data storage devices 1301, 1307. With regard tostorage device 1301, the management software 1300 and to is typicallyassociated with the manufacturer of the storage device 1301. As such,the management software 1302 may communicate with the managementcomputer or server 1305 two share data or control information therebetween. The data storage elements 1307 are shown without managementsoftware included therein, which is to represent that the managementsoftware on those data storage devices 1307 are not communicating withthe management computer or server 1305, as the data storage devices 1307are likely from a different manufacturer than the owner or operator ofthe management computer or server 1305. As such, in example embodimentsof the disclosure wherein the performance of a data storage network thatis not associated with the performance evaluation software or method ofthe disclosure, then the method is software the disclosure must obtainthe data latency metric information from a source other than themanagement software 1300 and to which is present in a storage deviceassociated with the management computer server 1305. Therefore, theexample methods and software the disclosure may utilize the cloud 1304,a data storage network controlling server 1006, or an applicationinstalled locally at a data storage network to monitor I/O requests inthe data storage network and report latency metrics back to the softwaremethod of the disclosure for evaluation. Thus, examples of thedisclosure allow for the method or software of the disclosure toevaluate latency performance of a data storage network containingforeign data storage elements or drives.

Example embodiments of the disclosure have application to variousdifferent types of data networks and configurations, such as a SAN, WAN,LAN, and other types of network configurations that involve a server orprocessing unit communicating with one or more data storage elementsconnected thereto. Example embodiments of the disclosure may also beapplied to a host or an interconnected network of hosts.

Aspects presented in this disclosure may be embodied as a system,method, or computer program product. Accordingly, aspects disclosedherein may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirelysoftware embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code,etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that mayall generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module” or“system.” Furthermore, aspects disclosed herein may take the form of acomputer program product embodied in one or more non-transitory computerreadable nnediunn(s) having computer readable program code embodiedthereon. Any combination of one or more computer readable nnedium(s) maybe utilized. The computer readable medium may be a computer readablesignal medium or a computer readable storage medium. In the context ofthe disclosure, a computer readable storage medium may be any tangiblenon-transitory medium that can contain or store data or a programproduct for use by or in connection with an instruction executionsystem, apparatus, module, or device. Program code embodied on anon-transitory computer readable medium may be transmitted using anyappropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless, wireline,optical fiber cable, RF, etc., or any suitable combination thereof.

Computer program code for carrying out operations for aspects disclosedherein may be written in any combination of one or more programminglanguages, including object-oriented programming languages such as Java,Smalltalk, C++ and the like or procedural programming languages, such asC+, C#, Objective C, Assembly, Ruby, Python, PHP, and SQL. The programcode may be executed on any processor, whether local, remote, or in thecloud to control or analyze data in accordance with example embodimentsof this disclosure.

Aspects presented in this disclosure are described above with referenceto flowchart illustrations or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems) and computer program products according to embodimentsdisclosed herein. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations or block diagrams, can be implemented bycomputer program instructions. These computer program instructions maybe provided to a processor of a general-purpose computer, specialpurpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus toproduce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via theprocessor of the computer or other programmable data processingapparatus, implement the functions specified in the flowchart or blockdiagram.

Example embodiments disclosed herein may be provided to end usersthrough a cloud computing infrastructure. Cloud computing generallyrefers to the provision of scalable computing resources as a serviceover a network. More formally, cloud computing may be defined as acomputing capability that provides an abstraction between the computingresource and its underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers,storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network access to ashared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidlyprovisioned and released with minimal management effort or serviceprovider interaction. Thus, cloud computing allows a user to accessvirtual computing resources (e.g., storage, data, applications, and evencomplete virtualized computing systems) in “the cloud,” without regardfor the underlying physical systems (or locations of those systems) usedto provide the computing resources.

In the preceding, reference is made to example embodiments of thedisclosure, however, the scope of the disclosure is not limited tospecific described embodiment(s). Rather, any combination of the abovenoted features, elements, or functionalities, whether related todifferent examples or not, is contemplated to implement and practiceembodiments of the disclosure. Furthermore, although embodimentsdisclosed herein may achieve advantages over other possible solutions orover the prior art, whether or not a particular advantage is achieved bya given embodiment is not limiting of the scope of the disclosure. Thus,the preceding aspects, features, embodiments and advantages are merelyillustrative and are not considered elements or limitations of theappended claims except where explicitly recited in a claim. Further, asused herein, the directional or orientation terms such as front, back,top, bottom, up, down, etc. are not meant to be limiting, but merelyreflect the orientation of the respective embodiment as they appear inthe Figures. It will be understood that the nomenclature used todesignate each embodiment are interchangeable depending on the spatialorientation of the embodiment in use.

While the foregoing is directed to embodiments presented in thisdisclosure, other and further embodiments may be devised withoutdeparting from the basic scope of contemplated embodiments, and thescope thereof is determined by the claims that follow.

We claim:
 1. A method performed by a system comprising a hardwareprocessor, comprising: creating a historical workload fingerprint modelfor a storage network from training data, comprising: receiving thetraining data from the storage network, wherein the training dataincludes data latency metrics for the storage network; creating a binhistogram representative of the training data; creating a labelled pointdata structure using the bin histogram, the labelled point datastructure comprising a plurality of points corresponding to differenttime intervals, and each respective point of the plurality of pointsrepresents a group of values representing corresponding numbers ofinput/output (I/O) operations of corresponding different sizes; applyinga clustering algorithm on the labelled point data structure to generateclusters representing respective workload types; and classifying acurrent sample data from the storage network into a given cluster of theclusters generated by the clustering algorithm, wherein the givencluster represents a current workload type corresponding to the currentsample data; assigning a score to the current sample data based on thegiven cluster and the historical workload fingerprint model; responsiveto the score, correlating a measured latency value of the current sampledata to historically measured values of a plurality of; and identifying,based on the correlating, which of the plurality of factors is a causeof a latency corresponding to the current sample data in the storagenetwork.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the clustering algorithmcomprises a k-means clustering algorithm.
 3. The method of claim 1,wherein each respective point of the labelled point data structurefurther represents a first metric including a ratio of reads and writes,and a second metric including a cache hit ratio.
 4. The method of claim1, wherein the clustering algorithm comprises a Gaussian mixture modelclustering algorithm.
 5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:identifying latency thresholds for respective workload types of theworkload types, wherein the identifying of the latency thresholdsproduces a first latency threshold for a first workload type of theworkload types, and produces a second latency threshold for a secondworkload type of the workload types; and identifying the current sampledata as representative of an outlier based on a latency threshold forthe current workload type, the latency threshold for the currentworkload type being one of the latency thresholds.
 6. The method ofclaim 5, wherein the identifying of the latency thresholds comprisesidentifying a data point or location for a workload type where a latencypercentile slope plot changes from a first slope to a second slope at anelbow.
 7. The method of claim 1, further comprising applying theclustering algorithm to the current sample data to classify the currentsample data.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of factorscomprise a factor relating to an operation of a processor, and a factorrelating to an operation of a cache.
 9. The method of claim 1, whereinthe correlating responsive to the score comprises performing thecorrelating responsive to the score being greater than zero.
 10. Anon-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer executableinstructions stored thereon, that when executed by a processor, causethe processor to perform a method for identifying latency contributorsin a data storage network, comprising: creating a historical workloadfingerprint model for a data storage network from training data, theworkload fingerprint model comprises a multi-dimension vectorrepresentative of at least I/O counts in the training data, a read/writeratio of the training data, and a cache hit percentage in the trainingdata; monitoring and classifying a current sample data from the datastorage network into a cluster, current workload fingerprint, andcurrent workload type; assigning a score to the current sample databased on the historical workload fingerprint model; and correlatingmeasured latency values from the current sample data to historicallymeasured latency related factors to create a latency score chart thatidentifies factors causing latency in the data storage network for thecurrent sample data.
 11. The non-transitory computer readable medium ofclaim 10, wherein the read/write ratio represents a ratio of a number ofreads and a number of writes, and wherein the cache hit percentagerepresents a percentage of hits of a cache in response to reads andwrites.
 12. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 10,wherein the creating of the historical workload fingerprint modelcomprises: receiving the training data from the data storage network,the training data comprising latency metrics for the data storagenetwork; creating a bin histogram representative of the training data;creating a labelled point data structure using the bin histogram, thelabelled point data structure comprising a plurality of pointscorresponding to different time intervals, and each respective point ofthe plurality of points represents a group of values representingcorresponding numbers of input/output (I/O) operations of correspondingdifferent sizes; applying a clustering algorithm on the labelled pointdata structure to generate clusters representing respective workloadtypes; and identifying latency thresholds for each workload type of theworkload types.
 13. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim12, wherein the clustering algorithm comprises a k-means clusteringalgorithm.
 14. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 12,wherein each respective point of the labelled point data structurefurther represents a first metric including a ratio of reads and writes,and a second metric including a cache hit ratio.
 15. The non-transitorycomputer readable medium of claim 12, wherein the clustering algorithmcomprises a Gaussian mixture model clustering algorithm.
 16. Thenon-transitory computer readable medium of claim 12, wherein thecomputer executable instructions when executed cause the processor tofurther: identify latency thresholds for respective workload types ofthe workload types, wherein the identifying of the latency thresholdsproduces a first latency threshold for a first workload type of theworkload types, and produces a second latency threshold for a secondworkload type of the workload types.
 17. The non-transitory computerreadable medium of claim 16, wherein the identifying of the latencythresholds comprises identifying a data point or location for a workloadtype where a latency percentile slope plot changes from a first slope toa second slope at an elbow.
 18. A system comprising: a processor; and anon-transitory storage medium storing instructions executable on theprocessor to: generate a historical workload fingerprint model by:receiving training data comprising latency metrics for a storagenetwork; creating a labelled point data structure comprising a pluralityof points corresponding to different time intervals, wherein eachrespective point of the plurality of points represents a group of valuesrepresenting corresponding numbers of input/output (I/O) operations ofcorresponding different sizes; applying a clustering algorithm on thelabelled point data structure to generate clusters representingrespective workload types; and classify a current sample data from thestorage network into a given cluster of the clusters generated by theclustering algorithm, wherein the given cluster represents a currentworkload type corresponding to the current sample data; assign a scoreto the current sample data based on the given cluster and the historicalworkload fingerprint model; responsive to the score, correlate measuredlatency values of the current sample data to historically measuredfactors, the historically measured factors being different from latency;identify, based on the correlating, which of the historically measuredfactors is a cause of latency corresponding to the current sample datain the storage network.
 19. The system of claim 18, wherein eachrespective point of the labelled point data structure further comprisesa first metric including a ratio of reads and writes, and a secondmetric including a cache hit ratio.
 20. The system of claim 18, whereinthe historically measured factors comprise a factor relating to anoperation of a processor, and a factor relating to an operation of acache.